But the revisionists have suffered a defeat. We could not submit to this arbitrary attitude of the revisionists and make ourselves accomplices to the betrayal and liquidation of the Party.
To want to destroy Marxism-Leninism and liquidate the revolutionary Party, the vanguard of the working class, is as vain a wish as to want to liquidate the class struggle.
In June 1963 the Brussels Federation called an extraordinary congress and re-established its unity on the basis of Marxism-Leninism.
On December 22, 1963, the National Conference of the Belgian Communists declared that the Communist Party of Belgium would be reconstituted throughout the country on the basis of Marxism-Leninism. The National Conference declared null and void the various resolutions adopted by the so-called Communist congress held at Easter, 1963, which confirmed the transformation of the organization controlled by the revisionists into a reformist party.
Subsequently, the National Conference elected the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belgium reconstituted on the basis of Marxism-Leninism.
The Conference adopted a programme of action which has since stood the test in mass action.
Our journal, La Voix du Peuple, has reappeared and became a weekly on January 1 this year. We have publicized our stand through posters, meetings, pamphlets, agitational and trade journals.
Our Party already constitutes a considerable political force which has achieved successes in organizing the struggle against capital. The Communist Youth and the Communist Students have both rebuilt their national organizations on the basis of Marxism-Leninism. The organization of Young Pioneers has been reactivated in two regions.
On May Day we gave proof of the vitality of our Party. A mass rally was held at Charleroi, followed by a parade through the streets of Brussels by enthusiastic and disciplined demonstrators, filled with revolutionary spirit. This ended with another mass rally.
While the organization of the revisionists is in the process of disintegration, our Party is growing from strength to strength.
* * *
An examination of the objective situation in Belgium can be summed up as follows: the contradictions of the capitalist world are shaking Belgium, and the aggravation of the general crisis of capitalism is particularly marked there.
The crisis of capitalism in Belgium is reflected in the crisis of the bourgeois parties, including the Socialist Party.
The working class of our country has more than once demonstrated its militancy.
Now it is up to us to fulfil our vanguard role.
But we must ceaselessly raise the level of the struggle of the working class, of the labouring masses.
It is also necessary to contribute actively to the international class struggle which is developing victoriously and on an ever wider scale.
The struggle of the working class and the labouring masses in our country is part of the world revolutionary struggle.
In order to determine correctly the strategy and tactics of the working class, it is necessary to base ourselves on an analysis of the concrete situation in our country and also on a correct estimate of the world political and economic situation.
The question now is to apply the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism and the general line of the international communist movement to Belgium’s concrete conditions.
For the objectives of the activities of the working class and labouring masses to be valid, account must be taken of the fact that the present situation in Belgium is conditioned by its subjugation to U.S. imperialism.
The Lefevre-Spaak government, as we have said before, is an instrument of the most reactionary stratum of finance capital and is the lackey of U.S. imperialism.
Our Central Committee has defined the Party’s present programme of action in ten points. This programme gives the precise objectives of the struggle on all fronts and we can sum them up as follows:
– the general programme of demands of the working class;
– defence of democratic liberties with stress on the repeal of the anti-strike laws; realization of self-determination for the two peoples and of the three communities on a basis of federalism; disbandment of fascist organizations;
– the struggle to prevent world war, against imperialist aggression, against the nuclear threat and nuclear blackmail by the imperialists, for the total prohibition and destruction of nuclear weapons;
– active proletarian internationalism:
– solidarity with the socialist camp as a whole and with every socialist country in particular;
– solidarity with the revolutionary movements of national liberation, and with the peoples of the Congo and Viet Nam in particular; we must keep Lenin’s words firmly in mind:
The revolutionary movement in the advanced countries would indeed be a mere deception if complete and close unity did not exist between the workers fighting against capital in Europe and America and the hundreds and hundreds of millions of “colonial” slaves who are oppressed by that capital.[1]
– solidarity with the working people of other countries, and particularly with the peoples of Spain and Portugal who are struggling against bloody fascist dictatorships;
– the struggle for national independence, for liberation from the U.S. yoke: “Quit NATO!”
* * *
Our activity as the revolutionary vanguard party must signify that the working class, through its day-to-day struggles, must prepare to accomplish its historic task the socialist revolution.
These day-to-day struggles would be just a hoax if the Marxist-Leninist vanguard failed to make ever larger sections of the working class and the labouring masses realize the necessity of socialist revolution and the necessity of preparing for the socialist revolution.
[1] V. I. Lenin, “The Second Congress of the Communist International, Selected Works, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1944, Vol. 10, p. 160.